12-14-2019, 03:49 PM
2019 LOOKS AS THOUGH INDIA UNDER MODI HAS MOVED TO BECOME A HINDU RASHTRA- WHAT ARE IT'S IMPLICATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES FOR MINORITIES ESPECIALLY INDIAN MUSLIMS. ALSO IN THIS DAY AND AGE IT IS ALSO RELEVANT FOR MUSLIM NATIONS TO ESTABLISH A POLICY FOR REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS AS MANY OF THESE PEOPLE ARE THE FLOTSAM OF CIRCUMSTANCES INTERNATIONALLY. THIS WILL BE REVIEWED HEREAFTER .
INDIA UNDER MODI IS MOVING SYSTEMATICALLY WITH A SUPREMACIST AGENDA SAYS PM IMRAN
https://www.dawn.com/news/1521876/india-...s-pm-imran
Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been moving systematically with a Hindu supremacist agenda.
The prime minister was referencing the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill passed by India's upper house amid protests on Wednesday. The bill will let the Indian government grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants who entered India from three neighbouring countries before 2015 — but not if they are Muslim. Modi's government — re-elected in May and under pressure over a slowing economy — says Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are excluded from the legislation because they do not face discrimination in those countries.
Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Imran stated that the bill was the latest of Modi's attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda, "starting with illegal annexation and continuing siege of IOJK [Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir]; then stripping 2 million Indian Muslim in Assam of citizenship, setting up internment camps; now the passage of Citizenship Amendment Law; all this accompanied by mob lynchings of Muslims and other minorities in India".
He warned that bowing down to a "genocidal supremacist agenda", propagated by Nazi Germany, had once before lead to World War II. "Modi's Hindu supremacist agenda, accompanied by threats to Pakistan under a nuclear overhang, will lead to massive bloodshed and far-reaching consequences for the world," he warned. "As in Nazi Germany, in Modi's India dissent has been marginalised and the world must step in before it is too late to counter this Hindu supremacist agenda of Modi's India [that is] threatening bloodshed and war."
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, seeks to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians,
Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh "because of religious persecution" before 2015. It does not, however, extend to Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar.
Home Minister Amit Shah said it was not anti-Muslim because it did not affect the existing path to citizenship available to all communities. Amnesty India, however, said the legislation legitimised discrimination on the basis of religion and stood in clear violation of the India's constitution and international human rights law.
AS INDIA BECOMES A DE FACTO HINDU RASHTRA ,
BJP LOOKS FOR NEW WAYS TO POLARISE VOTERS
The opposition’s surrender to Hindutva has only raised the bar for what can polarise voters. Enter NRC and CAB.
https://theprint.in/opinion/india-becomes-de-facto-hindu-rashtra-bjp-looks-for-new-polarisation-ways/331220
INDIA's CITIZENSHIP BILL HAS ONLY ONE AIM: PROTECT NON-MUSLIMS AND HARASS MUSLIMS
https://www.dawn.com/news/1521496/indias...ss-muslims
TUMULT IN INDIA
https://www.dawn.com/news/1523502/tumult-in-india
OVER the past week, Hindutva backed by the brute force of the state has bared its fangs in India. Hundreds have taken to the streets to protest the BJP-led government’s ill-planned moves of passing the Citizenship Amendment Act — which allows only non-Muslim refugees from some of India’s neighbouring states to apply for citizenship — and the introduction of the National Register of Citizens, widely seen as a fig leaf for stripping Indian Muslims of citizenship.
Clearly, there is an Islamophobic agenda behind these diabolical moves by the Modi clique, which is why India’s Muslims as well as conscientious citizens from other communities are protesting. Violence continued on Friday; at least 13 people have been killed in various cities so far, while hundreds have been temporarily detained as the state tries to put a lid on the protests. Curfew has also been enforced in certain areas, while the internet has been shut down in many cities.
While the Sangh Parivar was largely shunned in the post-independence era, because M.K. Gandhi’s assassin was an ideological child of the RSS, in today’s India, the storm troopers of Hindutva control the levers of state. It is no surprise then that ever since coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to remake India in the image of the Sangh — a Hindu rashtra to be built on the model of a fabled Vedic golden age. In this programme, there is no place for minorities, specifically India’s Muslims, hence the legal efforts to disenfranchise the community. However, though the Sangh ideologues are trying their best to label Indian Muslims as ‘outsiders’, history points to another reality. Islam has existed in the subcontinent for over a millennium, while Muslims have been living in what is now India for centuries. That should remove any lingering doubts about the right of India’s Muslims to citizenship of that country. No bigoted law can be allowed to deprive them of their identity and dispossess them from the land of their ancestors.
As India drops the facade of a secular democracy and champions the politics of hyper-nationalism, the international community needs to speak up. Under the Modi regime, Muslims have been lynched by vigilante mobs on suspicions of consuming or transporting beef and the world has kept silent. Under the BJP dispensation, India-held Kashmir has been under lockdown for months and its people held prisoner, but the world has looked away.
Now, as New Delhi lights the fires of communalism by disenfranchising millions of Muslim citizens, will the international community still keep silent? Moreover, questions of identity and citizenship are best left to academics to discuss. If zealots — guided by imagined histories — are put in charge of such sensitive matters, and worse, given the legal powers to decide who is and who is not a citizen, disaster is sure to ensue.
ITS NOW OR NEVER: WHY YOUNG, URBAN INDIAN MUSLIMS PLUNGED INTO THE ANTI-CITIZENSHIP ACT PROTESTS
https://www.dawn.com/news/1523363/its-no...t-protests
Rehan Sheikh had been disturbed by the prospect of a nationwide National Register for Citizens since April when he first heard Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announce plans to bring in the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Addressing a public meeting then, Shah said the legislation would grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then flush out “infiltrators” through the NRC. In the following months, as the NRC was implemented in Assam and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government became more vocal about a nationwide citizenship register, Sheikh realised how closely it was linked to the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Yet, when the Bill was passed by Parliament and became an official Act on December 12, Sheikh was taken by surprise. “It happened so suddenly,” said Sheikh, a 30-year-old investment advisor working with a bank in Mumbai. “I always knew this was going to be a dangerous law, but I did not expect to be passed so quickly after they tabled it in Parliament.” Since then, like almost every other Muslim he knows, Sheikh has been brimming with feelings of anger, indignation, dread and a sense of urgency. These feelings have intensified after December 15, when the Delhi police unleashed an unprovoked assault on students of Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi, and students around the country began to protest in response.
For young, urban, middle-class Muslims like Sheikh, who had been more invested in their community’s educational and economic development than politics, the Citizenship Amendment Act and the police crackdown on protests have been an eye-opening jolt. “We have been silent about a lot of things for the sake of peace, including the Supreme Court verdict about the Babri Masjid,” said Sheikh, referring to the court’s decision on November 9 to hand over the disputed land in Ayodhya to the Hindu side. “But now it is a question of our very existence in this country. We have to speak out now.”
‘I cannot believe this is happening’
This “now or never” sentiment was palpable at Mumbai’s August Kranti Maidan on Thursday, when thousands of people across communities turned up to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act. Several protesters had never considered stepping out on the streets to raise slogans before, but now, for the first time, they felt compelled to raise their voices. “My family has never been interested in politics before,” said Alam Khan, a travel agent in his 30s. “My wife did not watch the news even when the Ayodhya verdict came out or when Article 370 was removed [in Jammu and Kashmir].” “But this time our community is directly being targeted, so many of my family members wanted to protest,” he said.
Khan’s personal desire to be vocal is rooted in both fear for his community and a rising sense of patriotism. “Muslims from my grandparents’ generation were not literate enough to preserve documents. How will people like us show proof of residence in India from the 1950s and 70s?” he said. “I cannot believe this is happening in my country – we cannot let it happen.” Firdos Farooqui, a medical doctor from South Mumbai, said that the protest at August Kranti Maidan was only the second time she ever felt the need to participate in a public agitation. “I had protested triple talaq last year because it is an un-Islamic practice, and now I am protesting CAA and NRC because they are against India,” she said. “I did not expect that the law would be passed so easily, without much opposition in the Parliament.” Like Farooqui, Farzana Khan, who had travelled for the protest all the way from the northern suburb of Mira Road, was also rattled by the idea of Indian Muslims being asked to prove their citizenship. “My father was a freedom fighter who won medals for this country,” she said. “What more do I need to prove?”
Wearing religion on one’s sleeve
According to 39-year-old Javed Sayed, it is the support of non-Muslim Indians that helped Muslims across the country to step out in large numbers and protest visibly in public. “I think Muslims had resigned themselves to a lot of injustice towards the community, so there were hardly any protests against NRC in these last few months,” said Sayed, a graphic designer from Mumbai. “But after CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act] was passed, when so many non-Muslims came out to speak for us and to support the students of Jamia, we found it easier to protest.”
Indian Muslims’ discomfort with public dissent is rooted in a history of bitter experiences with street protests, particularly since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. But some Muslims are now ready to discard the past and take control of their narratives. Journalist Humaira Ansari, for instance, said that after the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed, she decided to “stop giving a damn” about how other people perceive her political stances. “Earlier, whenever there were terror attacks and Muslim groups went out of their way to condemn the violence, I always felt uncomfortable about it,” she said. “I always questioned, why should we have to do it? Why should I have to wear my religion on my sleeve?” Ansari, 33, has had sleepless nights since the Act was passed. “Now I feel it is time for us to embrace our religion, to step out and say yes, I am a Muslim and I have a problem with the way Muslims are mistreated and targeted in this country.”
IP Address: Logged
INDIA UNDER MODI IS MOVING SYSTEMATICALLY WITH A SUPREMACIST AGENDA SAYS PM IMRAN
https://www.dawn.com/news/1521876/india-...s-pm-imran
Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been moving systematically with a Hindu supremacist agenda.
The prime minister was referencing the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill passed by India's upper house amid protests on Wednesday. The bill will let the Indian government grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants who entered India from three neighbouring countries before 2015 — but not if they are Muslim. Modi's government — re-elected in May and under pressure over a slowing economy — says Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are excluded from the legislation because they do not face discrimination in those countries.
Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Imran stated that the bill was the latest of Modi's attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda, "starting with illegal annexation and continuing siege of IOJK [Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir]; then stripping 2 million Indian Muslim in Assam of citizenship, setting up internment camps; now the passage of Citizenship Amendment Law; all this accompanied by mob lynchings of Muslims and other minorities in India".
He warned that bowing down to a "genocidal supremacist agenda", propagated by Nazi Germany, had once before lead to World War II. "Modi's Hindu supremacist agenda, accompanied by threats to Pakistan under a nuclear overhang, will lead to massive bloodshed and far-reaching consequences for the world," he warned. "As in Nazi Germany, in Modi's India dissent has been marginalised and the world must step in before it is too late to counter this Hindu supremacist agenda of Modi's India [that is] threatening bloodshed and war."
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, seeks to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians,
Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh "because of religious persecution" before 2015. It does not, however, extend to Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar.
Home Minister Amit Shah said it was not anti-Muslim because it did not affect the existing path to citizenship available to all communities. Amnesty India, however, said the legislation legitimised discrimination on the basis of religion and stood in clear violation of the India's constitution and international human rights law.
AS INDIA BECOMES A DE FACTO HINDU RASHTRA ,
BJP LOOKS FOR NEW WAYS TO POLARISE VOTERS
The opposition’s surrender to Hindutva has only raised the bar for what can polarise voters. Enter NRC and CAB.
https://theprint.in/opinion/india-becomes-de-facto-hindu-rashtra-bjp-looks-for-new-polarisation-ways/331220
INDIA's CITIZENSHIP BILL HAS ONLY ONE AIM: PROTECT NON-MUSLIMS AND HARASS MUSLIMS
https://www.dawn.com/news/1521496/indias...ss-muslims
TUMULT IN INDIA
https://www.dawn.com/news/1523502/tumult-in-india
OVER the past week, Hindutva backed by the brute force of the state has bared its fangs in India. Hundreds have taken to the streets to protest the BJP-led government’s ill-planned moves of passing the Citizenship Amendment Act — which allows only non-Muslim refugees from some of India’s neighbouring states to apply for citizenship — and the introduction of the National Register of Citizens, widely seen as a fig leaf for stripping Indian Muslims of citizenship.
Clearly, there is an Islamophobic agenda behind these diabolical moves by the Modi clique, which is why India’s Muslims as well as conscientious citizens from other communities are protesting. Violence continued on Friday; at least 13 people have been killed in various cities so far, while hundreds have been temporarily detained as the state tries to put a lid on the protests. Curfew has also been enforced in certain areas, while the internet has been shut down in many cities.
While the Sangh Parivar was largely shunned in the post-independence era, because M.K. Gandhi’s assassin was an ideological child of the RSS, in today’s India, the storm troopers of Hindutva control the levers of state. It is no surprise then that ever since coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to remake India in the image of the Sangh — a Hindu rashtra to be built on the model of a fabled Vedic golden age. In this programme, there is no place for minorities, specifically India’s Muslims, hence the legal efforts to disenfranchise the community. However, though the Sangh ideologues are trying their best to label Indian Muslims as ‘outsiders’, history points to another reality. Islam has existed in the subcontinent for over a millennium, while Muslims have been living in what is now India for centuries. That should remove any lingering doubts about the right of India’s Muslims to citizenship of that country. No bigoted law can be allowed to deprive them of their identity and dispossess them from the land of their ancestors.
As India drops the facade of a secular democracy and champions the politics of hyper-nationalism, the international community needs to speak up. Under the Modi regime, Muslims have been lynched by vigilante mobs on suspicions of consuming or transporting beef and the world has kept silent. Under the BJP dispensation, India-held Kashmir has been under lockdown for months and its people held prisoner, but the world has looked away.
Now, as New Delhi lights the fires of communalism by disenfranchising millions of Muslim citizens, will the international community still keep silent? Moreover, questions of identity and citizenship are best left to academics to discuss. If zealots — guided by imagined histories — are put in charge of such sensitive matters, and worse, given the legal powers to decide who is and who is not a citizen, disaster is sure to ensue.
ITS NOW OR NEVER: WHY YOUNG, URBAN INDIAN MUSLIMS PLUNGED INTO THE ANTI-CITIZENSHIP ACT PROTESTS
https://www.dawn.com/news/1523363/its-no...t-protests
Rehan Sheikh had been disturbed by the prospect of a nationwide National Register for Citizens since April when he first heard Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announce plans to bring in the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Addressing a public meeting then, Shah said the legislation would grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and then flush out “infiltrators” through the NRC. In the following months, as the NRC was implemented in Assam and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government became more vocal about a nationwide citizenship register, Sheikh realised how closely it was linked to the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Yet, when the Bill was passed by Parliament and became an official Act on December 12, Sheikh was taken by surprise. “It happened so suddenly,” said Sheikh, a 30-year-old investment advisor working with a bank in Mumbai. “I always knew this was going to be a dangerous law, but I did not expect to be passed so quickly after they tabled it in Parliament.” Since then, like almost every other Muslim he knows, Sheikh has been brimming with feelings of anger, indignation, dread and a sense of urgency. These feelings have intensified after December 15, when the Delhi police unleashed an unprovoked assault on students of Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi, and students around the country began to protest in response.
For young, urban, middle-class Muslims like Sheikh, who had been more invested in their community’s educational and economic development than politics, the Citizenship Amendment Act and the police crackdown on protests have been an eye-opening jolt. “We have been silent about a lot of things for the sake of peace, including the Supreme Court verdict about the Babri Masjid,” said Sheikh, referring to the court’s decision on November 9 to hand over the disputed land in Ayodhya to the Hindu side. “But now it is a question of our very existence in this country. We have to speak out now.”
‘I cannot believe this is happening’
This “now or never” sentiment was palpable at Mumbai’s August Kranti Maidan on Thursday, when thousands of people across communities turned up to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act. Several protesters had never considered stepping out on the streets to raise slogans before, but now, for the first time, they felt compelled to raise their voices. “My family has never been interested in politics before,” said Alam Khan, a travel agent in his 30s. “My wife did not watch the news even when the Ayodhya verdict came out or when Article 370 was removed [in Jammu and Kashmir].” “But this time our community is directly being targeted, so many of my family members wanted to protest,” he said.
Khan’s personal desire to be vocal is rooted in both fear for his community and a rising sense of patriotism. “Muslims from my grandparents’ generation were not literate enough to preserve documents. How will people like us show proof of residence in India from the 1950s and 70s?” he said. “I cannot believe this is happening in my country – we cannot let it happen.” Firdos Farooqui, a medical doctor from South Mumbai, said that the protest at August Kranti Maidan was only the second time she ever felt the need to participate in a public agitation. “I had protested triple talaq last year because it is an un-Islamic practice, and now I am protesting CAA and NRC because they are against India,” she said. “I did not expect that the law would be passed so easily, without much opposition in the Parliament.” Like Farooqui, Farzana Khan, who had travelled for the protest all the way from the northern suburb of Mira Road, was also rattled by the idea of Indian Muslims being asked to prove their citizenship. “My father was a freedom fighter who won medals for this country,” she said. “What more do I need to prove?”
Wearing religion on one’s sleeve
According to 39-year-old Javed Sayed, it is the support of non-Muslim Indians that helped Muslims across the country to step out in large numbers and protest visibly in public. “I think Muslims had resigned themselves to a lot of injustice towards the community, so there were hardly any protests against NRC in these last few months,” said Sayed, a graphic designer from Mumbai. “But after CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act] was passed, when so many non-Muslims came out to speak for us and to support the students of Jamia, we found it easier to protest.”
Indian Muslims’ discomfort with public dissent is rooted in a history of bitter experiences with street protests, particularly since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. But some Muslims are now ready to discard the past and take control of their narratives. Journalist Humaira Ansari, for instance, said that after the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed, she decided to “stop giving a damn” about how other people perceive her political stances. “Earlier, whenever there were terror attacks and Muslim groups went out of their way to condemn the violence, I always felt uncomfortable about it,” she said. “I always questioned, why should we have to do it? Why should I have to wear my religion on my sleeve?” Ansari, 33, has had sleepless nights since the Act was passed. “Now I feel it is time for us to embrace our religion, to step out and say yes, I am a Muslim and I have a problem with the way Muslims are mistreated and targeted in this country.”
IP Address: Logged